Game Night
by Stealth Dragon
Summary: John is broken. How does one fix him? Sequel to Heartbeat. Team fic plus Elizabeth and Carson.


**Game Night**

by

Stealth Dragon

Rating – T

Disclaimer – I do not own Stargate Atlantis. What I own is a mutant cat with thumbs. I'm not kidding, people, she has thumbs! Just not useful thumbs.

Synopsis – John is broken. How does one fix him? Many spoilers, so watch out! Sequel to Heartbeat. Team fic plus Elizabeth and Carson.

A/N: If you haven't read Heartbeat, it might be best to.

SGA

Scenario one: John didn't make it in time. A deep sleep skirting the edges of being in a coma dulled his reaction time considerably. The alarms blared, but to his ears and in his mind they melded with his dreams. When the dreams snapped from existence, the alarms remained, and it took his fogged brain too long to push through the mire and realize they were real. John bolted from his bed, stumbling over his own feet and gear. He wasted no time, just grabbed his gun and bolted from his room in a T-shirt and sweats to go racing down halls that shouldn't have been empty but were. All nice and eery, then gut-wrenchingly nauseating when John skidded to a halt at the top of the gate room stairs, and stared down at a floor covered in the dry husks of men and women, soldiers and scientists, friends... Family. When the wraith converged on him, he let them. It was only fitting, and he knew he deserved it.

Scenario two: John had the weapon trained on Kolya as the Genii commander inched back toward the gate holding Elizabeth as a shield. John's sights were fixed, his aim true. Then Kolya moved, barely a fraction, and the bullet struck Elizabeth in the heart. Kolya grinned.

"I warned you, Major. Perhaps next time you will have bettered your aim." He then dropped Elizabeth's lifeless body to crumple into a pile of skin, cloth, and bones onto the floor, and stepped back into the event horizon. John could only watch, and contemplate turning the weapon on himself.

Scenario three: John awoke, or seemed to awake, fading from the arid desert into a humid jungle. He looked at his hand holding the gun, then at the body of McKay on the loamy floor. Crushed ferns were splayed beneath the physicist's motionless body, and the rich black dirt drank up his pooling blood.

"McKay?"

No response. John's aim had been true.

Scenario three: Ronon came too early, and shot the wraith as it's hand descended. John lay there struggling to breathe, to keep his heart beating. But it hurt, it hurt so much. He didn't want it to keep beating. For the first time in his life, John wanted to give up, and so did.

Scenario four: The Genii had them all, lined up in a row before John, forced to their knees on an unrelenting concrete floor. There were so many cracks in the floor, it was a wonder it still held together, and John almost laughed out hysterically at worrying over the stability of a concrete floor. He was tied to a chair, and his friends were before him with their hands tied behind their backs. One by one, Koyla moved down the row... and shot each and every one in the back of the head.

Elizabeth, McKay, Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, Zelenka... Everyone. Blood exploded out the front, then when the mutilated heads cracked on the cement, pooled out the back in a rapidly spreading puddle of vermilion. The puddles were so perfect, so clean, reflecting everything, including John's sickened face when the puddles spread to him, joining as one – from puddle to lake. John screamed, struggled, pleaded, then begged. When it was all over, he begged again to be next. Kolya knelt before him.

"I don't think so Colonel. Someone should live to mourn them, and to clean up this mess. You live another day. Should you die tomorrow, that is your choice."

Scenario five: John's mutated hand squeezed tighter and tighter around Elizabeth's throat. He screamed in his own head for the beast to stop, but the beast was enjoying this. Tighter and tighter until the fateful snap. Elizabeth went limp. The monster released her to crumple, and John shrank away into the darkness of his mind, waiting to die.

Scenario six: He was too late again, this time to save others. There was not a living body left in the Athosian village. Teyla fell to her knees beside the corpses of Jinto and Haling. John knelt to gather the discarded husk that had once been an infant, held the tiny body to his chest, only to have it shatter to dust.

Scenario seven: Elizabeth's body this time, shattering, and McKay's, Teyla's, Ronon's... All dust, all nothing left...

Scenario eight, nine, ten, elven, twelve... In between, each time, were faces – _his _face. Too many. They liked what they were seeing. They liked what they could make John think. They had what they needed, the rest was just child's play to pass the time.

SGA

Trivial Pursuit was out of the question. You don't play an Earth-culture based game with aliens, and Ronon and Teyla haven't seen enough films to make the movie version of the game fair. Rodney was tired of Poker, or more appropriately tired of his slowly depleting stash of Hershey bars. They really needed something less valuable to gamble with. Monopoly was already in use by the biology department on their game night, and Uno by a gaggle of overly bored and off-duty marines. So that left Sorry.

Not that Rodney minded. He liked the game for its simplicity. There were some days his own mind needed a break from itself, and Sorry wasn't what one would call a game of strategy.

Better than that, it didn't take long to explain. Rodney whispered a simplified version of the rules while setting up, and they were playing immediately after the cards were set down. Oh, and Rodney was winning.

Or was until Ronon bumped him off.

The Satedan's mouth twisted in a small smirk. "Sorry," he whispered.

Rodney curled his lip in a sneer rather than wasting words. It was Teyla's turn now, so he passed the flashlight over to her and leaned back against Sheppard's bed. He was growing accustomed to this night after night game night. He'd only indulged to stop hearing Ronon's rumble of a whine about being bored. Rodney had his laptop, Teyla her meditation, but since sharpening knives could be noisy, Ronon didn't have much of anything to keep him occupied. Teyla had suggested playing the games piled in crates and on shelves in the rec room. Two players could have sufficed, but Teyla was persistent in her gentle nagging that Rodney join in.

Rodney really did have better things he could have been using this time for. But he'd found merit in these mind-numbingly simple games. He always thought much more clearly after playing them – like taking a nap without actually sleeping.

Teyla drew a card and moved her piece to the sliding marker. She smiled in small triumph at being able to move ahead in such a way. She was also catching up to Rodney's blue piece.

"Your cockiness is premature," Rodney whispered, and drew a card.

John screamed, and every head turned to see his body jackknife off the bed in an arch that could have snapped his spine. With more grace than a cat, Teyla unfolded from her spot and stepped lightly over the board to the bed. She sat on the edge as she gathered Sheppard's painfully thin body into her arms to rock him like a child while whispering assurances into his ear.

"It's all right, John. It was not real. You are home now. You are safe. We are safe. It is all right..."

John shuddered and sobbed against Teyla. She held him tight in case he tried to get away so he could go hide in a corner again. It was depressing how easily she could restrain him. It was even more depressing how small he looked in Teyla's arms. _Teyla's _arms. It might have been more tolerable if it had been Ronon's arms, but Teyla was supposed to be the small one of the group.

Teyla's assurances drifted off into the quiet hum of an Athosian song. She rubbed Sheppard's bony back until the shakes subsided, and John sighed in exhaustion. When she set him back down, she made sure to turn him so that he was facing them, so that he could see and know that Teyla's words weren't just words but tangible truths. She adjusted the blankets around his shoulders, then stepped lightly over the board back to her spot.

John's eyes were large and dark, sunken into his colorless face and glazed over with distant memory and fear. Ronon slipped his hand under the covers to lightly squeeze John's forearm – like he always did. Rodney reach for John's shoulder and clasped it briefly, as he always did. Just to let John know they were there. That was their part to play. Visual presences and physical contact kept John grounded, whether it was an embrace or a quick pat on the back.

Just never touch his head or his chest; that was the only rule.

John's face relaxed, then his eyes that blinked heavily a few times before closing. He wasn't asleep yet. A pale hand on a thin arm snaked out from beneath the covers to land on the nearest shoulder, which happened to be Rodney's. Rodney adjusted it so it wouldn't fall, then gestured at Ronon.

"Your turn."

SGA

Ronon shifting his weight made Sheppard's desk chair squeak. He flipped the small white game tile over his knuckles like a coin as he swiveled. Tonight, the game was something called Rummi Kub, which McKay had borrowed from Zelenka who had borrowed it from some other scientist. It was a game of strategy, but one even Ronon's 'tiny grunt brain' could handle according to Rodney. Ronon had graced Rodney with a sneer and a growl rather than verbal threats since the little man had been in a foul mood when he said it. Ronon had become accustomed to ignoring anything that came out of Rodney's mouth when he was angry.

They couldn't play yet until Carson had finished checking Sheppard's vitals. He had Sheppard on his back, with the blankets pulled down to his waist and his shirt pulled up to his throat. Ronon's seat gave him an unobstructed view of the pale arch of John's protruding ribcage as Carson listened to the man's heart. John was compliant from an exhaustion sleep couldn't get rid of, and a lack of any recent bad dreams. When Carson finished listening to John's chest, he and a nurse lifted Sheppard to place the stethoscope to his back. Carson instructed John to take deep breath, and Ronon watched the ribs stretch the skin.

The hard part was next. Ronon stilled and tensed like a hunting animal just in case he was needed. The nurse on the other side of the bed placed her hand on the side of John's face and turned his head to face her. She flashed the penlight in his bleary eyes with the other hand, effectively creating enough of a distraction for Carson to whip out a syringe and plunge it into John's arm. John tried to pull away, but by the time he did the needle was gone.

Sheppard didn't like needles. He didn't like pills either, but pills were easier to hide and get rid of later. If John wanted any relief from the headaches then it had to be the needle, and as long as he could be distracted then administration went without a hitch. During those times when John had meandered around the isolation room, then after when he was in the infirmary, it took four just to hold him down for a needle to be stuck in his arm.

Ronon relaxed back into the chair, and the game tile resumed tumbling over his knuckles.

The nurse adjusted Sheppard's shirt back around his body. Next came the glass of frothy pink liquid and a straw. Carson brought the straw to Sheppard's lips and prodded until his mouth took it. It took gentle coaxing for Sheppard to drink; most of the glass this time around. Sheppard could eat solids but when it came to the nightmares then liquids usually dealt better in his stomach. Solids seemed to give him more of a reason to puke.

"All done then," Carson said, easing John back onto the pillow. The nurse tucked the layers of blankets around John's body, taking time to ensure every nook and cranny was closed off. Blankets could be layered, the temperature of the room increased, and John would still shiver. Carson said it was because John had no padding – muscle or fat – between his skin and his bones.

"Way to state the obvious," Rodney had said. "What I want to know is why Sheppard's so tired all the time."

Carson answered that using more medical terms. Ronon knew there was a much simpler explanation.

Nightmares were exhausting, especially the ones that made the dreamer scream.

When Carson and the nurse were gone, Ronon pushed off from his seat to join Rodney and Teyla already by the bed, setting up the trays where the tiles would be placed. Ronon eased his back against the bed with a satisfied grunt, drawing one knee up to rest his arm across. The first game was introductory to help Ronon and Teyla understand how it was played. The second game was more serious – as serious as game night went. Ronon wasn't giving up on trying to make a wager with every game they played. He knew Rodney still horded a secret stash of chocolate bars somewhere.

Half-way through the game, the Satedan felt something tugging at one of his knots of hair. Ronon tilted his head back, pressing it into the mattress. Even in the poor light, Ronon saw the thin fingers pale enough to glow plucking at cords of hair. The flashlight was past to someone else, and the shifting light flashed off the whites of Sheppard's heavy-lidded eyes within the darkness of the blankets.

"Hey Sheppard," Ronon said. "Wanna play?"

Sheppard's head poked out of the covers, and his body inched toward the side of the bed so he could peer down. He studied the current game with vacant, sleepy interest and his chin resting a centimeter from the mattress' edge. Teyla, sitting on Ronon and Sheppard's other side, adjusted the blankets tighter around John when he started shivering. Ronon reached out and placed his hand on Sheppard's back. He felt better about making physical contact when Sheppard had blankets providing padding his body didn't have. Ronon was a hypocrite in that he despised hearing anyone call Sheppard 'fragile' and yet couldn't fight the impression that too heavy a pat on the back or clasp on the shoulder would make him shatter.

It also bothered Ronon in a secret way to be able to feel so many bones so close to the skin like a wraith-drained husk.

John never answered. He did slip a thin arm down to Ronon's tray and take a tile. He rubbed his thumb along the smooth edge, traced out the colored number on the front with his finger, then turned it over and over in his hand. Ronon wondered if he liked the texture of the tile, or maybe its glossy surface. Ronon could have sworn he saw Sheppard smiling.

Sheppard fell asleep by the third game, and the tile dropped from his limp fingers. Teyla tucked his hand back beneath the covers, then rose up enough to carefully maneuver his head back onto the pillow.

After the fourth game, they cleaned up and got ready for bed. Teyla used the bathroom first, then Rodney, then Ronon. When Ronon emerged dressed in a loose shirt and cloth trousers, Sheppard began to stir. First motion, escalating into moans and quiet whimpers that would eventually erupt into a jack-knifing body and screams. Teyla moved quick and graceful to kneel at the side of the bed and rub John's back. Ronon moved to the other side. He took one of the smooth tiles from the bag on the floor, then uncurled John's rigid fingers from his palm to tuck the tile against his hand. John squeezed the thing like he was holding on, then slipped his hand back beneath the covers.

He didn't wake the rest of the night.

SGA

Elizabeth felt like an intruder sometimes. She'd wanted to be there from the start, when Carson had suggested John heal in his quarters when the constant motion and sudden chaos became too much for the Colonel to handle. Her duty to Atlantis kept her from doing that, so she settled for every chance she got, even sacrificing her spot at the table during girl's poker night.

Like a vampire, she never really entered until invited in, and never really played whatever game was set up on the floor until the same. She felt like a stranger all because she hadn't been there night after night like the others. Teyla, observant as always, begged to differ.

"You are the one who saved him," she'd said one night. "You belong here just as much as any of us if not more so."

Tonight, oddly enough, they were playing poker. Rodney had found something he could wager that didn't involve the depletion of his goody stash. He'd finally loaded a new computer game, one he taught both Ronon and Teyla how to play, thus inadvertently getting them addicted. His wager involved minutes they could all spend playing the game.

"Ten the least. The most is up for grabs," he said, dividing the poker chips from ten minutes to two hours.

Ronon and his perpetual poker face were winning.

Deeper into the game, John awoke for a visit to the bathroom. Everyone paused to watch him shuffle around the bed like a sleepy child until he vanished behind the door. They then resumed playing.

"I fold," Rodney said, tossing in his hand.

"As do I," Teyla said, setting her hand face down more gently. It was just Elizabeth and Ronon now. Chips were tossed in, and Ronon called.

Elizabeth squeaked in a rather undignified manner when her hand turned out to be the winner. Rodney smirked and applauded, while Teyla turned her head away to hide her smirk. Ronon was staring between his losing hand and Elizabeth's winning hand in bemusement.

Elizabeth's victory smugness was short lived when she realized John's bed was still empty. Whatever his business in the bathroom, he should have been out long before now.

"Probably fell asleep in there," Rodney said. "I caught him asleep in the shower the second night in."

Elizabeth unfolded herself from her seat and moved to the door. She knocked softly, no one answered.

"John?" she knocked again. Still no answer. So she pressed her ear to the door. She thought she heard something so soft and low she couldn't be sure. And Dr. Beckett had said not to take any chances. "John, I'm coming in. If you don't want me too you'd better say something."

She palmed the door to a darkened bathroom, then stepped inside and palmed the lights. She looked immediately to the corner, almost out of habit.

John was huddled rocking, moaning, and gouging his bare skin with his fingernails raising welts and beads of blood. He was dressed only in his sweat pants, his sweatshirt tossed several feet away. John was starting at it as though it had morphed into an iratus bug.

"John?" Elizabeth whispered. Any sudden and loud noise would only make his current state worse, Elizabeth had seen it before. She turned to the others gathered at the door.

"I'll call Beckett," Rodney said before Elizabeth had the chance to ask.

Elizabeth looked back at John. She started moving, lowering into a crouch on approach. She could hear the moans that turned out to be a continuous litany of mutterings.

"Blood, blood, too much, too... it won't come off, damn it it won't come off, it won't it won't come off, too much blood..."

"Shhh," Elizabeth breathed. "There's no blood John."

John gasped. "Yes, yes there is. He shot you... Ah hell, he shot you and it's all over me and I can't get it off..." The tears poured fast down his face. "He shot you..." his breath stumbled on a sob.

Elizabeth reached out taking John by the wrist. Physical contact probably wasn't wise with John delusional and possibly feral, but it had worked before. She kept hold of his wrist with one hand as she massaged his hand with the other, digging her thumb into his palm, then rubbing each arctic cold finger to warm them. "John, it's all right, I'm right here. Look at me John, please look at me."

John shook his head vehemently. "No, no, no, no, no..."

Elizabeth released his hand to take his face and turn it her way. He jerked trying to pull away. Elizabeth just pressed harder.

"John, look at me." It came out as a harsh command. "_Look_ at me."

John inhaled a shuddering breath and looked up. Elizabeth put her other hand on the other side of his face holding his head in place and maintaining eye-contact. She brushed the tears from his face with her thumb along the sharp jut of his cheekbone. She smiled wanly at him.

"See?" she said. "I'm all right."

John just stared at her and Elizabeth let him. Teyla slipped in with a moist washcloth, dabbing at the hair-line cuts on John's arms. Elizabeth moved her hand from John's face, down his neck to rub his back following the ridge of his backbone pressing against his cool skin. She felt that skin – sticky with sweat - shudder and the muscles beneath it coil and twitch. She wanted to cover him back up with the sweater but had to wait until Carson came to check John over.

Beckett came almost unexpectedly, and sooner than Elizabeth realized. Teyla moved to give him room to kneel while Elizabeth remained keeping one hand on John's shoulder.

"Doesn't look too bad," Carson said. "Not like last time." He pulled a bottle of antiseptic from his bag. "You did good, lass."

When Carson finished cleaning John's arms, Elizabeth left so John could be coaxed into showering. It wasn't long before both he and Carson came out, John in a fresh sweater and sweat pants. He shuffled contritely to the bed where he sat and let Carson go over him with a stethoscope and thermometer. The last time this had happened, John had suffered a severe drop in body temperature.

Elizabeth took Carson's lack of concern as a cue not to be worried. Beckett gave John a clasp on the shoulder before helping him back into bed. John was out before the covers were even pulled over him.

"Do you seriously expect us to believe this is just his brain 'correcting itself'?" Rodney sneered.

"I don't expect you to believe anything," Carson said, closing up his bag. "But it's the truth. It'll still take some time, but he's getting there – recalling what happened last time."

Last time John's arms had been covered in blood, and he'd bit Ronon while the big man was holding him down so Carson could slip in a sedative. Rodney shuddered. "Could have just been a weaker memory this time," Rodney said.

Elizabeth rubbed her arms to warm away the prickling in her skin. "It's the same one, Rodney. Believe me."

It was strange to admit, but it really hadn't been all that bad this time around. Elizabeth's skin remained goose fleshed as she sighed in relief.

SGA

Athosians in general had never been heavy sleepers. If they could go without sleep, they would, and Teyla felt she would have been better off. She hated the dreams she had when the wraith came – visions of culls, and feeling the thrill of the wraith as they sped over their terrified herd as though it was her own exhilaration. Thank the Ancestors they never lasted when they had her bolting from her bed to raise the alarm.

Teyla waking now had nothing to do with throaty laughter at another cluster of humans scooped up into a beam. She was being watched.

Teyla opened her eyes to azure darkness and someone standing over her. Her natural inclination was to let that someone make the first move to see if their intent was hostile. A wraith would have had her stunned. Human enemies always hampered themselves trying to remain quiet so their victim didn't have time to react, when in truth they gave her plenty of time to make a move whenever she wished.

In that time she recalled where she was and why she was here, making her hesitate. A good thing too when her eyes adjusted enough for John's pale face to stand out in the darkness, hovering like something disembodied. Teyla shoved back the desire to ask John what he was doing. Sometimes he just liked to watch, whether it was while they were playing board games or – as the case was now – watching them sleep. He could also be dreaming, and when that was happening it was never a good idea to wake him. The last time he had reacted violently, nearly injury himself as he fought against those trying to calm him.

John moved as though through water when he knelt beside Teyla's cot. He watched her a little longer, then adjusted the covers that had slipped below her shoulders back up to her neck. He rose, and moved on to Ronon's cot, watching him for a moment, kneeling, watching, then adjusting the covers. John then moved on to Rodney.

Teyla saw the whites of Ronon's eyes in the darkness, which explained why the Satedan hadn't grabbed John's wrist due to the proximity. Ronon was a worse light sleeper than Teyla. He gave her a nod of acknowledgment, then they both returned their attention to John who was straightening after adjusting Rodney's blankets. Rodney's snoring hitched and Teyla could make out his ink-dark shape shifting in a tighter huddle beneath the blankets.

John drifted like a man moving through water back to his bed and climbed in. His little vigil had taken a lot out of him; he wasn't even able to pull the blanket up past his hips when his arm dropped. Teyla waited, then slid with ribbon grace from her cot. She walked heel to toe in perfect silence to John's bed, and tugged the covers up tucking them around his shoulders and neck. John didn't stir. For once that didn't make her nervous. She brushed wayward strands of hair from off his pallid forehead. John looked normal as he slept. Far too thin, but other than that just like everyone else. Teyla wasn't sure if that meant anything, and knew better than to read too deep into it. Still, she let herself be comforted by it.

Teyla returned to her own cot and buried herself beneath her woven blanket. Ronon's eyes still winked white like distant stars. His vision was as keen as most animals, so she smiled at him, and was able to discern his own small return grin, like approval.

SGA

Beckett was quick and efficient, avoiding sacrificing the one for the other. John's heart thumped the steady and somewhat lethargic rhythm of one who'd just woken up. Carson moved the stethoscope from John's bare chest to his back, and instructed him to breathe in. The rush of air was loud as a strong wind brushing past the ears, free of liquid crackles. John's lungs had been liquid free for a solid five days now, his heart was strong, his blood-pressure normal, and his appetite was allowing him to drink full glasses of protein shakes. He'd gained three pounds since he'd finally stopped throwing up at unpredictable intervals.

John shivered. Three pounds wasn't really that noticeable unless John was standing on a scale. It didn't bury the knobby, sharp angles of his bones like sticks wrapped in stretched cloth. It did, however, put more color back into his skin.

Carson draped the stethoscope around his neck to have it out of the way as he helped John back into his sweater.

"How're feeling, lad?" he asked.

"Better," was the muffled response from within the sweater. John's head popped out of the collar in a burst of dark hair standing up and out in all directions. Then he added, "Tired." He squinted thoughtfully like a little boy waking up too early, only to recall that it was Saturday. "What's up with that?"

"A lot of things," Carson said. "Half being your brain chemistry righting itself. The other half being your body healing."

John nodded in understanding.

Carson licked dry lips at a sudden burst of trepidation concerning his next question. "And the dreams?"

John lifted one hand to scratch the side of his disheveled head. "It's hard sometimes," he said, confessing without realizing it from the washed-out nonchalance of his tone. "They can be really real. Real enough that I actually feel things. Except I've always been told you aren't supposed to feel things in a dream."

Carson shrugged. "Generally. But the brain is too unusual an organ to say it's impossible to feel things in a dream. I sometimes get a few dreams about visiting me gran, and wake up smelling her famous spiced cake. Takes me a wee bit to realize I'm in Atlantis. Gets a bit depressing at times. That was bloody good cake."

John smiled wearily. "Wish I could dream of cake." Then he let the smile drop. "Sometimes the dreams get really weird so that I know they're not dreams, but I can't wake up." John shifted his hand to his shoulder, rubbing it softly from collarbone to shoulder blade. It was a posture of insecurity hidden behind massaging out a muscle ache. Carson could tell by the way John's shoulders were pulled up and his back was curved. It made him seem so much younger, and all the more vulnerable. It gave him a hard to ignore air of someone who needed to be protected, ironically. John was the protector, rarely needing protection.

Didn't mean the favor couldn't be returned.

"Then they get too real," John said. He shuddered, curling into himself. "Makes it... hard to remember where I am sometimes. Sometimes... Sometimes I wake up, and wait to wake up again. And again, and again..."

Carson pressed his lips in concern over possible digression back into delirium. The biggest concern since finally rescuing him from those shape-shifting Asurans had always been John's mental health. For that to be set back would eventually set his physical condition back, and Carson knew a second go around could leave John in critical condition. Carson reached out grasping John by the upper arm, and squeezed pressing his fingers into bone.

"You are awake, lad," he said.

John nodded, and another tired smiled touched his lips. "I know. I always wake up to the same thing."

Carson smiled back. "Daft buggers arguing to wake the dead over some bloody game?"

John shrugged. "I like it. Someone's always there."

Carson released John's arm to pat it, then helped the pilot back beneath the covers for more rest. Carson waited until the others arrived baring some new game.

SGA

John awoke, and couldn't remember the dream, which was a first. Too tired to dream, he supposed, but knew better than to question it. He would take what he could get.

He felt groggy, light-headed, and safe enough to drift back to sleep, but couldn't thanks to all the skittering whispers situated beside his bed. He knew the whispers, knew the source, and curiosity still got the best of him. He inched over to the edge of the bed and peered down at the familiar group of people gathered around a game-board. Trivial Pursuit by the look. Carson and Teyla were sitting on the right side, Elizabeth and Ronon adjacent to them, and Rodney by himself on the left side.

"Seriously, Teyla," Rodney said, "Are you _sure_ about this? Spending one day on Earth does not make you an expert on Earth culture. And it had been a hallucination. _Sheppard's _hallucination which I don't even want to know how he butchered beyond there being dead people involved..."

John hung his head a little further over the side. "Whatcha doing?" he asked before Rodney could launch into potential insults concerning what John's hallucination on that mist planet had involved. Rodney jumped and snapped his head around. Everyone else looked up with a little more control, and smiled.

Elizabeth held up one of the pie-free pieces. "Playing Trivial Pursuit."

"The movie version," Teyla said, then added while looking at McKay, "which I suspect I would do relatively well at since I have become well acquainted with your movies."

Rodney snorted. "Not all of them."

"Thus the team-up, lad," Carson said, shaking his hand to make the dice tumble around his palm. Carson looked at John, and gestured at the board with his other hand. "Care to play?"

John blinked heavily at the board. He felt lethargic enough for another nap, but he was tired of sleeping, of dreaming, of feeling detached from body and mind and wondering if he was awake yet. Now that he was awake, he intended to stay awake. He slid out from under the covers onto the floor, huddling up with his knees pulled to his chest. Carson leaned to the side, snagging a blanket and pulling it off to drape around John's shoulders.

"Which color are we?" John asked. Rodney pointed to the blue peace.

Then Ronon raised his hand. "I want Sheppard on my side," he said. Elizabeth gave him an indignant look. Ronon just shrugged apologetically. "I never really see you at movie night."

"Doesn't mean I don't know movies. Watch it or I'll team up with John and you can have Rodney."

Rodney narrowed his eyes. "Gee, thanks."

"Perhaps we should leave things as they are," Teyla said.

Rodney suddenly stood. "Perhaps we should get a table. If Sheppard's joining us there's kind of no reason to sit on the floor. And I could go for some snacks."

Carson also rose to join him. "I'll go with you. I think the Colonel might be ready to step up to some soup." He looked at John for confirmation.

John grinned. "Chicken noodle?"

Carson chuckled. "Aye, I think that'll do. With some milk."

Carson and Rodney headed out to gather the needed supplies and victuals. Teyla leaned forward, reaching out to grasp John by the wrist for a light squeeze.

"You look well, John," she said.

"How are you feeling?" Elizabeth asked.

John picked up one of the pieces, turning it over in his fingers, rubbing his thumb along the smooth edges. It was a small, insubstantial weight, but it was solid and cool until his fingers warmed it.

He set the piece back on the board. "Awake."

The end

A/N: Finally! I can't believe how long this took to write. But I promised a sequel and a sequel you got. Hoped ya'll liked it. And I know questions concerning the shape-shifting Asurans weren't really answered, but the story decided to go another route that didn't allow room for explanations. This story was all about the healing.


End file.
